At Newport '63 ( Digipack Edition)

Martial Solal

The year is 1963, and the Algerian-born, French pianist Martial Solal is making his American debut, playing an engagement at the Hickory House on New York's famous, though dissipated, jazz boulevard 52nd Street and at the prestigious Newport Jazz Festival. While his career is firmly established in Europe, due in part to the exceptional solo, trio, quartet, and big band records issued on the Swing (Vogue) label beginning in 1953, he is little known in the States, though American musicians living and touring in Europe have discovered his abilities- during the previous decade he has already made significant recordings with such discriminating and distinctive artists as the legendary soprano saxist Sidney Bechet, bebop drum innovator Kenny Clarke, and tenor sax stylist Lucky Thompson. The acclaim for these appearances is overwhelming, and leads to the release of Solal's first American LP, At Newport '63(RCA), which includes accolades from Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, and critic Martin Williams. In his liner notes for the album, the respected jazz writer and producer George Avakian no doubt felt that he was paying Solal the highest possible compliment by saying that he "...plays more like an American than perhaps any other foreigner in the history of this highly American music."

Tracklisting:

1. Poinciana (The Song of the Tree)
2. Clouds (Nuages)
3. Suite pour une Frise
4. Stella by Starlight
5. What is Thing Called Love
6. 'Round Midnight
7. Boplicity
8. All God's Chillun Got Rhythm
9. Fine and Dandy (bonus track)
10. I Got Rhythm (take 1)
11. I Got Rhythm (take 2)
12. I Got Rhythm (take 3)

With Teddy Kotick (b), Paul Motian (d).

Recorded in NYC, July, 1963.

****************************************

"Martial Solal has, in abundance, those indispensables of the musicians' craft: sensitivity, creativity, and a prodigious technique. Most of all, he sparkles with refreshment - and for a jazz musician to sound refreshing in 1963 is no ordinary thing!"
- Duke Ellington

"It is remarkable to discover that an artist so far removed from the roots of jazz as Algeria and France can adapt himself so magnificently, and can create from the soul so basically as Martial Solal."
- Dizzy Gillespie